


dead john cheever, crab in glove

by thegatorgood



Category: What We Do in the Shadows (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:53:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26035213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegatorgood/pseuds/thegatorgood
Summary: It was a dark and stormy night.
Comments: 22
Kudos: 46
Collections: CAILURE EXCHANGE 2020





	dead john cheever, crab in glove

**Author's Note:**

> FOR #11

It was a dark and stormy night. Normally Jenna would be out picking up rides for Lyft and choosing a couple of victims to eat later, but even with her vampire healing powers she wasn't dumb enough to drive in this weather, so she'd settled on the couch with a bottle of redneck-who-tried-to-assault-his-Lyft-driver-not-realizing-she-was-a-vampire (October 2019 vintage) and her tablet. She was in the middle of watching Penny Dreadful when there was a pounding at the door.

Her roommate-slash-familiar Polleigh was visiting family in New Hampshire and not supposed to be back until Thursday. "Hello?" Jenna called out. She tried to sound scared. She'd always considered acting one of her top LARPing skills, but she didn't know if she was actually that good, or if the burglar she'd eaten in February had been really dumb.

"Jenna?" Technically Jenna didn't have a functioning heart anymore, but it would have sped up upon hearing that voice, that accent. "Is that you, my wobbly stupid little gosling?"

"Nadja!" Jenna flew to the door and flung it open. She hadn’t heard from Nadja or any of the others in almost a _year_. She’d told herself it was because she only had Guillermo’s number and the house’s address, and Guillermo sorted through the mail and responded to all her texts with “k,” and that either Guillermo was still bitter that she’d been made a vampire before he had, or Nadja was ignoring what Guillermo said, regardless of what he was saying. Nadja couldn’t have been ignoring Jenna on purpose, right? Jenna had been on the verge of flying down to say hi a couple of times, but she’d also been ghosted a couple of times by non-supernatural beings, and she didn’t want to risk it.

"Jenna!" Nadja hugged her in a way that confirmed that she definitely hadn’t been ghosting Jenna. That she never would have ghosted her. Her hair got in Jenna's nose and her arms were strong, but she smelled--tired, maybe? Jenna was still getting the hang of smelling emotions. "Can we come in, darling?"

It wasn't just Nadja on her doorstep, Jenna saw. It was Laszlo ("as the youths say, bring it in," he said, and she did) and Colin Robinson, and Guillermo, and Guillermo's vampire, the big one with the furs. They came in, trailing rain, except for Colin Robinson, who took his mackintosh and boots off at the door.

"What happened to the documentary crew?"

"We stole their van and absconded into the night," said Colin Robinson, hanging up his hat like he'd always lived there.

"What?"

"It was an emergency." Laszlo patted her on the top of her head. "And needs must."

"Yes," said Nadja, "we are on the run in your delightfully rural little backwater."

"I've always wanted to visit Lake Titicaca," said Laszlo, "although I fear they rather oversold the nudity."

Jenna sighed. "This is Ithaca."

"Ah, that explains it."

Jenna tried to catch Guillermo's eye, because he was the only person, apart from maybe Colin Robinson, who could appreciate how ridiculous the older vampires sometimes were, but he didn't look amused. Also, he smelled like a triple chocolate cake but with blood. It had been a very long time since Jenna had had chocolate cake, and the bottled blood hadn't been the best vintage to start with. Guillermo hadn't smelled like this before she'd left, had he? But then she hadn't seen him since before she was fully turned.

"My tiny slobbery baby," Nadja said, and wiped her chin, "you are drooling."

"Oh." Jenna passed her hand over where Nadja had brushed the lacy handkerchief, like she could brush away her embarrassment. Guillermo must have known she was thinking about eating him, but he looked more annoyed than afraid, and she didn't like that. She was a vampire. A dark denizen of the night. A fanged terror. And, okay, maybe a third of the size of the vampire Guillermo worked for, who almost certainly wouldn't let Jenna eat him. Jenna would never let anyone eat Polleigh, except Nadja, if Nadja wanted to really badly. "I--I have some extra blood, if you need it. You guys said you were on the run? What, like from the law?"

"Fuck the law," Colin Robinson said, with the swagger of an energy vampire who’d been feeding too much to care what anyone thought. "We're on the run from the Vampiric Council."

The _what?_ "You seem disturbingly gleeful about that."

"Not everyone enjoys short-notice moves as much I do," said Colin Robinson. She thought his eyes were glowing; he’d definitely been feeding. "And in the middle of the night in bad weather, too.”

After Colin Robinson had explained energy vampires, and after Jenna had recovered from having energy vampires explained to her, she was pretty sure she'd known several without knowing they were energy vampires. Her high school Econ teacher. At least one dungeon master. The person who had a drabble collection on Archive of Our Own with three hundred fandom tags and about as many chapters and updated it daily (and the drabble for Jenna’s tiny fandom was for a minor character _no one cared about_ ). "But you're still on the run from this Vampiric Council," she said. "Which, uh. What is it?"

Guillermo's vampire--Nandor, that was his name--looked at Nadja and Laszlo. "Are you kidding me?"

"She discovered her powers and killed a man," said Nadja dreamily. "It was time for her to move on, like in that song Laszlo and I wrote: if you turn somebody, set them free."

"Or marry them," said Laszlo, slipping his arm through Nadja's and kissing her on the cheek. She patted his hand.

Nandor glowered at them both. Jenna would have defended Nadja’s mentoring skills, but he looked pissed. She supposed hours in a cramped van with Colin Robinson would do that to you. "The Vampiric Council is our governing body," he said. "They sign treaties with other supernatural entities and they mete out justice for violations of our internal code."

"Okay," said Jenna. "So, uh. What are they chasing you for?"

"The first rule of the Vampiric Council," said Nandor, with a strange glance back at Guillermo, "is that it is forbidden for one vampire to murder another vampire."

"Second rule of Vampiric Council is you don't talk about Vampiric Council?" Jenna joked.

Nandor blinked, perplexed. "But we are talking about them right now."

"It's a--you must have missed that movie, Mast--Nandor," said Guillermo, and looked at Jenna. "He missed that movie."

"So: first rule, no killing other vampires. Unless it is in a duel, of course. Then you can kill all the vampires you want." He paused. "Hey, do you think we could have used that as an excuse in the first trial?"

"Dios mío," muttered Guillermo, and it was like a record scratch to Jenna's ears. Nandor flinched, and Nadja and Laszlo hissed at Guillermo, and then Nandor hissed at _them_ , which was weird.

Colin Robinson just chuckled.

"The Baron was burned to death," said Guillermo. "It was clearly not a duel."

"We could have said he was dueling the sun. He was on the drug blood, he might have tried it."

"Anyway," said Nadja, "the point we are trying to make is that outside of vampire duels, it is considered very bad form to murder other vampires, so do not do it, my little ground squash. It's more trouble than it is worth, and we didn't even kill any vampires. The Baron's death was a... mistake. An accident. A tragic accident."

"A tragident," said Laszlo.

"Yes," said Nadja, "that."

"So you're on the run from the Vampiric Council because they think you killed this Baron?"

"Well," said Nandor, "things snowballed from there, what with the dead vampire guard and the assassins and the ambush at the theater. But we can deal with it."

The _what_ and the _what_ and the _what_? Jenna could see Guillermo rolling his eyes. She was going to have to get him alone later and ask him what really happened. And also not eat him. She hadn't had cake in ages, though. It was so unfair.

"Also," said Laszlo, "while we're on the subject of things that incur the Vampiric Council's wrath, don't turn any babies into vampires."

"And make them a baby forever?" asked Jenna, horrified. "That's awful, who would do such a thing?"

"Only the most despicable of night walkers. Or someone who was extremely bored."

Nadja sighed. "Anyway, little Jenna, you were going to give us the tour of this barn you live in."

"It's a farmhouse," said Jenna. "The barn's out back." But she was glad to give Nadja a tour. She was even glad to give Laszlo a tour, because Laszlo had been very dismissive of her in the beginning and she wanted to show him she was an independent vampire who owned property and held down a part-time job and was learning a trade in her free time. She'd also been able to keep a familiar longer than two weeks, which was definitely something Laszlo couldn't manage.

"And this is the cellar," she finished. "We're, you know, working on bottling some of the bloodier victims for rainy days. Like, I don't always drink the full five and a half liters, and waste not, want not? And since we have the wine press for that, we're going to get a vineyard going this year and sell cheap wine to the local college students to help pay down my mortgage."

"Mortgage?" Nandor looked perplexed. "What is this mortgage?"

"Ah," said Colin Robinson. "Allow me."

Nadja wrapped an arm around Jenna's shoulders. "This is very lovely," she said. "Very dark and yet very clean. I like the lines of it. And the old wood is very good. It will ward off witches."

Laszlo muttered something under his breath about witches and old wood, and Nadja raised her eyebrows at him. "Would you like to repeat that?"

"I said, it _will_ ward off witches."

Jenna hadn't even known witches were a thing. But she was a vampire, and since she’d come to Ithaca she’d met a couple of sirens, and a bigfoot, and she had standing Saturday gaming nights with werewolves, so she guessed witches _could_ be a thing. "Thanks," she said. The real estate agent had said good bones, and even though that was a figure of speech, Jenna felt it to be true. And there were some bones now in the forests and fields around the house. She wondered if it would give the wine a certain terroir.

Sometimes it felt weirder that she was able to think about the potential wine harvest on her own six acres of land than the fact that she was a vampire. She owned property! She was taking online classes to finish her degree, and she had property, and she was going to start a small business. She was Jenna from Gen Z and she wanted to pay off her student loans, and also to suck your blood.

"So," said Nandor, "now that we know where everything is, can we move our coffins in?"

"Sure," said Jenna. "Uh, if Nadja and Laszlo want to take the guest bedroom, that leaves the two decoy bedrooms--you know, the ones with actual beds instead of coffin stands downstairs--for Colin Robinson and Nandor, and I guess Polleigh wouldn't mind it if you took her room for a few days, Guillermo--"

"Guillermo," announced Nandor, "is sleeping with me."

"Phrasing!" said Laszlo, as Nadja said, "What, really?" which made Guillermo turn beet red. He mumbled some denial Jenna didn’t catch, because she was thinking, _Make that a red velvet cake_. Maybe it was for the best that Guillermo wasn't going to be upstairs after all. She'd like to say she would never eat Guillermo, but he smelled like he'd taste great, and also he'd walked into her LARPing group and tried to make her and her friends a snack for vampires, like some kind of macabre Starbucks run. Jenna had discovered self-esteem around the first time she'd murdered a man, and she now had enough of it to find the idea of being compared to a Frappuccino insulting. She might be good at the "friend, not food" thing with Polleigh and the humans in her gaming group and a few of her neighbors, but Guillermo wasn't her friend. Guillermo was a jerk cake.

Guillermo had left the room to help Nandor with his coffin, and Laszlo chucked her under the chin. "You're drooling again, you know."

"It's all right, my little salt lick." Nadja smoothed her hair. "Everyone wants to eat Guillermo from time to time. After a while, you get used to it."

Laszlo nodded. "It's not so much as a rule as it is standard etiquette not to keep a virgin familiar. It's poor form."

"Very poor form. At first we thought Nandor kept Guillermo because he likes to fight, but then we realized it's because he's very very stupid."

"I, for one, am loving it," said Colin Robinson. "There's a lot of frustration in the air when there's a virgin around and vampires can't eat them. We had a few good years there."

Jenna blinked at him, remembering the first time she'd gone to the vampires' house, and Guillermo had shown her into a room, and Colin Robinson had shown up, and-- "Did you save my and Jonathan's lives just to piss off your housemates?"

"You say tomato, I say tomato."

"Shouldn't one of those tomatoes be pronounced differently?"

Nadja sighed. "Go help Laszlo with the coffins, Colin Robinson. My darling toddling tadpole and I have much to catch up on."

Colin Robinson went. Laszlo, with a flourish of his cape and a bow, went. 

"Tadpoles don't have legs," Jenna said.

"You are doing very well for yourself," said Nadja. Her arm was still around Jenna's shoulders and it felt really nice.

"I mean, I guess," said Jenna. "We won't know for sure until the first planting, but composting corpses has to be good for the grapes, and you won't believe how great it is to be invisible to some of the guys I drive for Lyft. And I can always go back and kill them later." She rested her head on Nadja's shoulder, which smelled like nineteenth-century perfume. Not that Jenna had ever smelled nineteenth-century perfume, but she remembered a footnote about ambergris from her high school literature classes, and the idea of that seemed to fit Nadja: vintage, classic, something a long way, or time, away. Jenna didn't want her far away, though. She wanted her close by.

"This is all very good of you," Nadja said, stroking her hair some more. "Earlier this year I reconnected with Simon the Devious and he accused me of settling, but he is stuck down in the shit-pipe with a grate on his shoe and a cursed hat on his head, so I think that maybe finding a nice quiet place to live with some friends and Colin Robinson is not something to be sneezed at after all. It also is very clever of you to learn the mechanical ways of these humans to fit into their world."

Jenna had been driving cars much longer than she'd been a vampire, but she decided she'd take the compliment. She’d spent most of a year being afraid the vampire who’d turned her and taught her was now ignoring her, and instead Nadja was not only ignoring her, she was here, saying nice things about her, showering her with endearments. "Thanks. I'm glad you guys came to visit. You can stay as long as you want to."

"The thing is," said Nadja and Jenna knew, she just _knew_ , that the next thing out of Nadja's mouth was going to be some variation on Spider-Man will always have enemies, "we are not going to be able to stay here for long."

"What do you mean? You can stay here as long as you like. I won't try to eat Guillermo, I promise." Jenna had friends. She had Polleigh. She had her game night group. But none of them were Nadja. None of them were Laszlo. None of them were even Colin Robinson. The vampires were her family. Her vampire family, because her human family was still trying to come to terms with her decision to drop out of school and start a winery. "In this economy?" her dad had asked.

Her mom had fussed. "Do you need help? Only we hear all sorts of things about the drinking culture at colleges--"

"Mom, it's okay," Jenna had said. "I do not drink vine." It wasn't the closest she'd come to a confession.

Her parents hadn't gotten it.

"It's not that. And it's a lovely little barn you have here, you know, so it's not that, either. It's what Nandor said. We are on the run from the Vampiric Council. If they find you hiding us, it's, you know--" Nadja dragged one finger across her throat. "--goodbye, head."

"I can turn invisible," Jenna said. "I can protect you!"

"Jenna, my puddly little cygnet, perhaps--perhaps I would prefer it if you protected yourself." Nadja cleared her throat. "Besides, we will be crossing the northern border soon. Laszlo did not burn all his bridges when he was in San Diego."

Jenna was trying to remember if there was a San Diego in Canada or if the vampires had confused Canada with California or if they thought California was a separate country and how it might be possible to make that mistake when Nadja pulled her purse--a huge, gothy, cobwebbed bag with brass latches and old, soft leather--off her shoulder.

"I have one request, however," she said, and pulled out a--a doll? Did she think Jenna was nine instead of twenty-two? She wrapped Jenna’s hands around the doll, like she thought Jenna was even younger. "Please take care of her if I do not return."

"I, uh," said Jenna, and the doll opened its eyes, and she nearly dropped it.

"Hello," the doll said.

Jenna looked at Nadja, then back at the doll. "Is this a... haunted doll?" Did those exist? Jenna had thought she'd had a pretty good read on the supernatural world, but tonight she'd learned about the Vampiric Council, and witches, and now haunted dolls. And haunted dolls meant ghosts, probably. There was a lot she must not know about.

"Yes," said the doll.

"Yes," said Nadja at the same time. "Haunted by me! Do you like?"

"Yes," said Jenna. Maybe not ghosts, because Nadja was still alive and next to her. "Wait, how does that--"

Nadja waved her hands. "It is a long story about ghosts and my housemates being idiots and I will tell it to you tomorrow night, after I have had some rest. The point is, my ghost is residing in that doll, and... and we almost died tonight. Last night. Whatever. The point is, things got very hairy for a moment and it made me think, what if that had been the end, and if it had been, there would have been no one to look after her. And I think she will be good for you as well. She will keep you company, if you are ever surrounded by dumb men who want to talk about nothing but their weapons and their penises all night long, as I have been."

"I've learned to be a little pickier about the role-playing groups I join," said Jenna, but she pulled the doll a little closer to her. It felt warm. "Are you sure you want to--?"

"Yes." Nadja pinched her cheek. "I have turned many vampires in my time, but I think you are my favorite. You will be her favorite, too."

"Okay," said Jenna quietly, hugging the doll closer. It'd be like having a piece of Nadja there with her, at least. The doll said something muffled, like a long _awwwww_.

"Just don't tell Laszlo I said that, or I would never hear the end of it." Then she wrapped her other arm around Jenna and the doll, pushing Jenna's face into her neck, the doll soft and squishy between. Jenna could feel her pressing a kiss to the crown of her head. “Actually, you can tell Laszlo. I don’t mind.”

Jenna tried to commit everything about this moment to memory, except maybe the haunted doll’s comments on her cleavage. “I don’t have to tell anyone,” she said. “It’s enough that I know.”


End file.
